Leave it to Leonor #342

This week, I’m thinking about friendship breakups. There are several topics which I constantly circle around for the newsletter and never get down to writing about and this is one of them. It has always seemed too personal, too sensitive, too invasive. It wasn’t until I had a call with Amanda of Loyal Nana, who was also ruminating on this topic, that I decided to dive in. She asked me about my own major friend breakup and every neuron lit up and my entire body got tingly (in a not-so-great way). Sharing the details with her was revealing. These are stories we want to tell, but for a variety of reasons, we don’t. Below is our back forth on the topic: 

Leave it to Leonor: I’ve been lucky to not have too many friendship breakups - some fade outs, sure, but no big blowouts. When talking about the big one, one of the first questions you asked me was if I imagined that this person was a “forever” friend and I said I thought she was, but now, of course in retrospect, I see that she was just supposed to be my friend for this specific length of time, something I refer to as a “season of life friend”. Either way, it reminded me of this Olivia de Recat drawing which absolutely shatters my heart every time I see it. (DOG!)(I should just buy it already right?) 

 I am firmly on the other side of this friendship breakup which made it much easier to have some perspective for this conversation. But you on the other hand, were/are right at the tail end and trying to sort that all out.

Loyal Nana: That illustration reminded me of one that I found on the web back in 2019 that inspired me to first write about friendships lost, also in collaboration with you! 

(I’ve searched far and wide for the origin of the illustration, but only found this Tumblr account.)

I felt immense sadness when I first saw that illustration because it is such a hard journey. 

I am currently right at the tail end of my breakup and I feel so free. My ex-friend and I broke up exactly a year ago, and I couldn’t shake or get out from under the feeling of sorrow, confusion, and dread of the whole year. It wasn’t until I made this friendship breakup survey and started talking to people about their own friendship breakups that I realized how common and painful the end of friendships can be. In these conversations, people spoke about friendships that ended after 12 years and breakups that happened as far back as 20 years. Some people said things like “The effects of a friendship break up are almost as traumatizing as a divorce” while others advised, "Move on faster. Live your life [because] people will come and go.

Hearing from other people, over and over, that this was one of the most painful things that they have ever experienced in their lives somehow normalized all of my pain and confusion around my own breakup. Not feeling alone in this helped me move on with my life once and for all.

This survey response from a V. from Uptown, NYC is really my current mood about the breakup:

Now that the actual friendship and the mourning are both (almost) over and done with, I feel more free than ever. I guess you are right, some friends are not forever friends, but a "season of life friend.”

LITL: I feel like more people could do with some acceptance surrounding the "season of life friend" because that breakup survey - wow wow wow. People poured their hearts out and while every situation was clearly different, it is so clear that friend breakups are as devastating as romantic ones. The age range alone! We had people from the 18-24 range all the way to 65-74. Friendship breakups truly come for everyone. 

I'm glad you brought up closure because what I found most interesting was that we gave that question an open-ended option and got an incredible amount of differing replies on "closure" (is closure really even a thing?! (I think that's a separate newsletter topic)